"You're covered in blood!" Oona pointed out, sounding alarmed.
But Quinn was totally nonplussed and didn't slow her steps. "That should scare off any riffraff on my way to the liquor store."
"You shouldn't go out alone," Valeska said as she stood up. "I'll go with you."
They were out the door within seconds, leaving Asher, Oona, and me in a tense silence as we all thought about where we'd been and where we were going. After a few minutes of that, I excused myself to go get cleaned up.
It wasn't until I went into the bathroom and I saw my reflection--the blood drying on my ashen cheeks, the leaves from the forest that the frantic ATV ride left tangled in my hair--that I really felt it hit me. I rushed over to the toilet and threw up what little I had eaten that day. Afterward, while washing off my face and hands, I heard a soft knock at the bathroom door.
"Are you okay?" Asher asked, opening the door a crack when I didn't answer.
I turned around and faced him, leaning against the cold metal sink. "Sure. Why not?"
He came into the room and pulled me roughly into his arms. I pressed my face against his chest and leaned fully on him, letting him be my strength when I had none.
FORTY-TWO
Quinn was hungover when we boarded the NorAm Overland Express in the afternoon, but Valeska seemed no worse for wear, which was impressive given the fact that I heard them drinking and talking all night long. Somehow, Asher and Oona had managed to sleep through it in the bedroom with me, but I hadn't been so lucky.
We sat on the second story of the double-decker carriage, the same way we had on the way here. But this time we did it for different reasons. The upper story had a big storage area in the back, which was reserved for large pieces of luggage or other oversized personal belongings.
In our case, that included the body of our friend and guard, Atlas Malosi.
Samael had arranged for him to come back with us, which did seem like the most fitting way for him to come home. The conversation I'd had with Samael had been brief, with him sounding rather shell-shocked as he repeatedly asked me if I was all right.
I lied and told him I was. I insisted that everything else was fine, and Samael told me to hop on the first Overland back to the city. I pretended that I could handle this, that I wasn't drowning in my own inability to protect Atlas and Asher and everyone I cared about.
I tried not to think about it as I slouched down in my seat. I put on a pair of oversized sunglasses I'd bought at the terminal. The warm sun that shone through the skylights--the sun that seemed so refreshing and beautiful a day ago--was now just an irritating reminder.
Fortunately, my lack of sleep the last few days finally caught up with me, and I was able to sleep through the majority of the long ride on the express. We had a stop in Texas, but I spent the whole time in the terminal, flipping through a paperback that someone had left on a bench.
Some twenty-eight hours after we first boarded the NorAm in Belize, we finally arrived back in Chicago. The sun was beginning to set as the express pulled into the city, and soon the towering skyscrapers blocked out what little light was left.
We waited on the platform, which was glowing from the bright billboards and flat-screen televisions that played NorAm info on an endless loop. At the end of the concrete platform, a large black hearse was parked in the emergency zone, which was marked by neon orange lights zigzagging through the pavement.
Four members of the Evig Riksdag--all in matching dark gray jumpsuits with copper patches on their shoulders in the shape of the three horns of Odin--unloaded the white rectangular box that the hospital had sent Atlas home in. They wheeled it past us, without looking at us or saying a word, and then loaded it into the hearse.
"Where are they taking him?" Oona asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Probably wherever his family requested he go."
We all stood together on the platform, our bags on shoulders or at our feet, and we watched as the hearse drove off.
"I should be getting home," Asher said. He moved so he was standing in front of me. "You could come with me."
"No, I can't. I have stuff I need to do."
"I understand." He chewed his lip for a moment, debating something, before saying, "We'll talk soon, okay?"
"Of course." I smiled weakly at him. He kept looking at me, like he wanted to say something more, but he never did. He just nodded, picked up his bags, and walked down to the cab line.
"I should get down to the Riks to see Samael," I said.
"I'm going with you, you know," Quinn said matter-of-factly.
"You don't have to," I said.
She scoffed. "Yeah, I do."
"Can I hitch a ride with you guys?" Valeska asked. "I need to see Samael, too."
"Gosh, now I feel left out because I'm the only one going home," Oona said with a weak laugh.
"I'll be home soon," I said, then quickly amended it with, "I hope."
"Do you want me to give you a ride?" Quinn offered Oona. She'd made the same offer to Asher earlier, but he insisted on taking a cab, since his place was the opposite direction of where we needed to be downtown.
"Nah, I can catch a cab." She slung her backpack over shoulder, then turned to face me. To my surprise, she threw her arms around me, hugging me quickly but tightly.
"I love you, Mal," she said, before she released me.
"What ... why did you say that?" I asked, stumbling over my words in my surprise.
She shrugged. "You looked like you needed to hear it, and I do, so why not say it?"
FORTY-THREE
Being back in the city felt so strange. It had only been just over a week since I'd left, and the city hadn't changed at all. But that week had been so intense and surreal, some part of me had believed that things couldn't be "normal" here. Because I was different, the world would be, too.
But the city was exactly as I had left it. A thin layer of smog blanketed everything, and all the lights--from cars, streetlamps, shop windows, and glowing adverts--seemed to be in a competition about which could blind me the most.
Traffic was a nightmare, both on the streets and the sidewalks, with pedestrians squeezing through bumper-to-bumper hovercars without paying us any mind. Last I heard, the population for the metro area had ballooned to over thirty-one million (and climbing), and based on how slowly we were crawling through the city, it seemed like half of them were downtown.
The overcrowding only added to the claustrophobic feel of the buildings soaring hundreds of feet in the air around us, many of them covered with billboards and posters. They lined every narrow street, with a thick layer of pedestrians and pop-up shops and food carts sandwiched between the buildings and the streets.
It was a nice night, at least for Illinois in late October, with an invigorating crispness to the air, so I rolled down the window of Quinn's car. Of course, that meant I was also letting in all the noise that was the song of the city--endless honking, snippets of music, people talking, laughing, cursing, and vendors selling their wares.
(In the eternal question, "Would I like an overpriced statue of the Willis Tower or a tonic made of vampire blood?" the answer was always "No.")
With the open window also came the smell. The scent of a million different beings and a thousand different cuisines mixed with exhaust and garbage created a ghastly but familiar aroma that was oddly comforting.
This--despite all its faults--was home, and I was glad to have made it back.
Eventually, after being caught in traffic long enough that Quinn had started threatening every driver within a twenty-foot radius of her car, we finally made it to the very heart of downtown, where the Evig Riksdag sat.
It was much smaller than all the buildings around it, and much more oddly shaped. While the architecture in downtown generally favored practicality, so that most buildings were slight variations of skyscraping rectangles, the Riks had taken a much different approach and built a concrete mushroom.
The design actually allowe
d it to be more secure, with the lower twenty floors narrow and nearly windowless. The top ten floors--where all the important celestial work took place--were much wider than the base and held up by metal supports.
Once we parked in the underground garage--passing through three separate security checkpoints on the way--Quinn, Valeska, and I took the elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor. When we got off, a long hallway of black marble floors and copper walls stretched out before us. At the very end was my Eralim Samael's office, but standing between us was a massive bronze door and a solitary guard.
The last time I had been here, there were two. There'd always been two, actually. But now Atlas was gone, leaving only Godfrey Wright to guard Samael.
Godfrey was a hulking cyclops, standing well over seven feet, with a giant bulbous eye that seemed to stare at everything and nothing all at once. His scalp was always shaved smooth, and he had a wide flat nose in the center of his rather square head. He was a man of few words, and I had no way of knowing how he really felt about anything, including myself, Atlas, and the whole world.
"We're here to see Samael," Quinn said when we reached Godfrey, and I was glad that she was the one doing the talking.
He didn't say anything, but he looked down at us with his single eye--unblinking, unmoving. I don't know that I'd ever felt as small as I did when he was appraising me then, so I avoided his gaze and looked at the dual black armbands wrapped around his thick bicep.
They were bands of remembrance for fallen comrades. One was for Marlow, my mother, and the other was for Atlas.
Godfrey reached for the door to open it for us, but he stopped, letting his hand linger on the bronze handle. "Samael has been very worried about you," he said in his rumbling baritone, and that was all. I thought he might say more, but he just opened the door and we went into Samael's office.
I'd never seen any of the other Eralim's offices, so I didn't know how Samael's stacked up against theirs, but it always seemed to me that it had to be one of the nicer ones. Everything was meticulously arranged, like it was set to be photographed for an art deco magazine.
He had little in the way of furniture--a large desk in front of the glass wall, a few chairs and a sofa, and his display shelves that housed art he'd collected over the centuries, as well as a secret cache of ancient weapons.
Samael had been standing at the window looking out at the city below, but when we came in he turned to face us and threw his arms up in his excitement.
Despite the fact that he'd been born over three centuries ago, he still had the appearance and exuberance of someone in his twenties, although his usual glee had been tempered since Marlow's death. He'd even seemed to age some--not a lot, but there were lines in his smooth umber skin that didn't used to be there.
Still, he was handsome, the way all Eralim tended to be. His aquamarine eyes were bright under a strong brow, and natural highlights coursed through his dark curls. Today he wore his thick hair up in a bun, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were pushed up to the elbows.
"You're here! You're finally here!"
Theoretically, Samael was speaking to all of us, but his eyes were on me, and I was the first--and only--one that he pulled into a hug. He always smelled of autumn leaves, even though I hardly ever saw him leave this building.
He released me, but kept his hands on my shoulders for a moment, inspecting me to make sure that I was all right. Ever since my mom had died, whenever we met he looked at me with this earnest intensity, like I was a damaged puppy that had been abandoned at the shelter and he was the in-over-his-head prospective adopting parent hoping that a few kind words and meaningful hugs could erase all the pain that had come before.
Finally he moved on to Quinn, putting a hand on her shoulder as he said, "Quinn, are you holding up okay? Malin told me you were injured."
"Nothing I can't handle," she said with a shrug, and the scar from an ennedi between her collarbones was proof enough of that.
Valeska had taken a step back from us and folded her arms firmly across her chest, presumably to ward off any hugs or touching Samael might attempt. Usually I didn't find him to be much of a touchy-feely kinda guy, but extreme situations had a way of bringing all kinds of reactions out of people.
"Valeska, it's always good to see you," he said, as she eyed him warily from under her thick lashes. "Thank you for coming in to to help with this. I know you put yourself at great risk, and I don't know how much could've been accomplished without you."
"We didn't accomplish much with me," Valeska replied dryly, then looked over at me and Quinn. "No offense."
"None taken," I said. "I wouldn't exactly call our mission a rousing success."
"I know you filled me in briefly on the phone, but would you want to sit down and talk about it? All of us together?" Samael asked. "What exactly happened?"
We sat down in his sitting area--me in his three-legged chair that had clearly been designed for style and not comfort, and Quinn on the black velvet couch next to Samael. He leaned forward, resting his arm on his knees like he was hanging on every word--and I began telling him everything, from the moment we first arrived in the Gates of Kurnugia.
How we found Tamerlane Fayette and I killed him, but he was only bait for a trap that Ereshkigal had set. How Gugalanna kidnapped Asher, and how Odin found me outside of the hospital in Caana City and sent me to retrieve the Valhallan cloak.
As I spoke, summarizing all the fantastic and horrifying details of entering Kurnugia, running into Lyra, and eventually making our way to Zianna, Valeska never sat down. She stood off to the side, occasionally interjecting when she thought I'd forgotten or misspoke about something.
When I got to the part about Zianna, Samael noticeably blanched. The only time I'd ever seen him look even remotely stricken like that was when he saw my mom right after she'd been murdered.
"They got into Zianna?" he asked in a quiet gasp.
I nodded. "Yeah. We escaped when it was beginning. Gugalanna and Ereshkigal looked intent on taking it over."
"Holy shit." He tented his fingers and stared off into space. "It's really happening."
"Brace yourself, Samael," Valeska said. "Malin hasn't even gotten to the worst part."
FORTY-FOUR
Valeska walked over to Samael's desk, where he kept a crystal bowl stocked with whatever unusual delicacy he was in the mood to snack on. Usually it was something unsettling, but she braved it, scooping up a handful without hesitation.
"And what's the worst part?" Samael asked, looking back over his shoulder at her, and honestly, I was curious about what Valeska might consider the worst.
"Odin's missing." She held up what looked like a jelly bean but with a dark center, inspecting it briefly before popping it in her mouth. She chewed it for a moment, before shrugging and carrying the bowl back with her.
"I mean, losing your friend was the worst part for all of you, and it really does suck about Atlas," Valeska amended her statement as she sat down in the chair next to mine. "He seemed like a nice guy. But I would say that Odin's disappearance is a bigger problem for mankind as a whole."
"We don't know that he's missing," I argued. "He just didn't show up."
"It was a really strange night," Quinn agreed. "We don't know what kept him."
"First off, he's a Vanir god. He can be anywhere at any time," Valeska contended as she munched on the strange jelly beans. "Being omnipresent is one of their coolest abilities. And second, you had his spear. His mega-important enchanted spear that has been hidden for like a million years or whatever. And now he's about to get it back, and he misses his chance to get it?"
She shook her head. "Doesn't add up."
"Are you suggesting that he was kidnapped or held hostage or something?" I asked, then looked over at Samael. "Is that even possible?"
He shook his head. "I don't really know much about what the world of Vanaheimr is like."
"Where do you go when you die?" Valeska asked abruptly.
&nbs
p; "Me?" Samael asked, looking taken aback. "When my time is up, I will go to Vanaheimr."
"Is your mom there now?" Valeska asked.
"No." He shook his head. "My mom was a Valkyrie, so she died about two hundred and fifty years ago."
"Your mom was a Valkyrie?" Valeska sat up straighter and her eyes widened. "Wait. How does that work?"
"Every Eralim has two parents, with the mother being a Valkyrie and the father being a Seraph," Samael explained. "The idea is that we are to exist as a bridge between the earthly world and the mystical one. Eralim are immortal, but we are unable to have children."
"Oh, like a mule or a liger," Valeska said.
He smirked. "Something like that."
"But if your dad's a Seraph, isn't he gone by now? Can't you ask him what's up?" Valeska asked. "Seraphim go to Vanaheimr, right?"
"Yes, he has passed onto Vanaheimr, but the Seraphim there can't have any contact with anyone on earth," Samael said. "Very few immortals are allowed into the Vanaheimr--only those that work for the Evig Riksdag, actually--but they have very strict rules in place. If he were to speak to me now, my ears would bleed, my eyes would explode, and I would die a painful death."
"Have you ever met Odin?" I asked Samael, getting the conversation back on track.
"A few times, but not many," Samael replied. "There aren't many occasions for Eralim to interact with him, and they like to keep it that way."
"What about any of the other Vanir gods?" I asked, remembering when Sedna had asked me if Odin was working alone.
He thought for a moment, then said, "Zeus, once, a very long time ago. But that's it. They tend not to grace the earth with their presence."
"Can you ask your boss about Odin?" I suggested. "Maybe see if they've heard anything about what he might be up to?"
"I could..." Samael allowed. "But then that would mean I'd have to explain how my Valkyrie-in-training not only had unauthorized contact with a Vanir god, but broke into their underworld prison. And she did it all with my permission."
"But Zianna has fallen." I leaned forward. "Does anybody upstairs have any idea what's going on? What's coming for the world?"
"They're supposed to." He rubbed his chin. "And they might. But I'm not part of the big discussions. I get handed assignments, and then I hand them down to the Valkyries. The bulk of my job is training Valkyries and handling any problems that arise with them. All the decisions and plotting and info, that's all above me."